Installation on Debian/Ubuntu Linux

Note

The following recipe for installing MirrorBrain was tested on Ubuntu 9.04 and 10.04. A similar procedure should work on other Ubuntu versions, and on Debian 5.0.

Install a standard Ubuntu LAMP server.

Add package repository

To subscribe to the repository with packages for Ubuntu 10.04, add the following to /etc/apt/sources.list:

 sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list
[...]
deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Apache:/MirrorBrain/Ubuntu_10.04/ /

There are more repositories at http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Apache:/MirrorBrain/ for other Ubuntu and Debian releases.

After adding the repository, update the local apt-get package cache:

sudo apt-get update

That will produce a warning message saying that a GPG key isn’t known for the new package repository. Take note of the key ID and import the key with apt-key:

 # sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://wwwkeys.de.pgp.net --recv-keys BD6D129A
Executing: gpg --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring \
  --secret-keyring /etc/apt/secring.gpg --trustdb-name /etc/apt/trustdb.gpg \
  --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys \
  BD6D129A
gpg: requesting key BD6D129A from hkp server hkp://wwwkeys.de.pgp.net
gpg: key BD6D129A: public key "Apache OBS Project <Apache@build.opensuse.org>" imported
gpg: no ultimately trusted keys found
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:               imported: 1

If you now run apt-get again, the warning should be gone:

sudo apt-get update

Note

The key’s validity may need to be refreshed later. If apt-get stops working, see Refreshing package sign keys.

Install the MirrorBrain packages

The following commands will install all needed software via apt-get:

sudo apt-get install mirrorbrain mirrorbrain-tools mirrorbrain-scanner \
libapache2-mod-mirrorbrain libapache2-mod-autoindex-mb

Select and install an Apache MPM

The MirrorBrain packages have dependencies on the Apache common packages, but not on a MPM, since the choice of an MPM is one that the system admin must make, and the MPMs cannot be installed in parallel. Thus, an MPM needs to be installed (unless a LAMP package selection was installed initially).

To install the worker MPM, run:

sudo apt-get install apache2-mpm-worker

If the LAMP server has been installed, the prefork MPM was probably preselected. It may make sense to switch to the worker MPM in such cases, which is a good choice for busy download servers. If something like PHP is in use as embedded interpreter (mod_php), though, then you need to stick to the prefork MPM, because libraries that are used by PHP might not be threadsafe.

Loading Apache modules

Don’t forget to load the needed Apache modules:

a2enmod form
a2enmod mirrorbrain
a2enmod geoip
a2enmod dbd
a2enmod autoindex_mb   # instead of Apache's own mod_autoindex
a2enmod asn # only if you use that module as well

Configure mod_geoip

Note

The mod_geoip Apache module that ships with Debian and Ubuntu is too old (1.1.x, see http://mirrorbrain.org/issues/issue16). Therefore the provided packages also include a newer mod_geoip (1.2.x). With the above apt-get line, you’ve got it already installed.

mod_geoip is configured to look for the GeoIP data set in /usr/share/GeoIP. A dataset may be installed already, but it is recommended to update it. In fact, that should be done regularly. There is handy tool that does this, and also downloads the larger “City” dataset:

# l /usr/share/GeoIP
total 1296
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1204947 2010-01-18 08:46 GeoIP.dat
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  109251 2010-01-18 08:46 GeoIPv6.dat
# geoip-lite-update
 * Reloading web server config apache2
   ...done.
# l /usr/share/GeoIP
total 52884
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1204947 2010-01-18 08:46 GeoIP.dat
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   591865 2010-09-26 14:26 GeoIP.dat.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1072630 2010-09-26 14:26 GeoIP.dat.updated
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   109251 2010-01-18 08:46 GeoIPv6.dat
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   652498 2010-09-26 14:44 GeoIPv6.dat.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1214981 2010-09-26 14:44 GeoIPv6.dat.updated
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20478077 2010-09-26 14:27 GeoLiteCity.dat.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 30605325 2010-09-26 14:27 GeoLiteCity.dat.updated

Now, one (or more) of the files ending in .updated can be used with Apache.

The larger dataset (GeoLiteCity.dat.updated) is recommended.

Configure mod_dbd

With Ubuntu 9.04, the DBD (Apache Portable Runtime DBD Framework) database adapter for PostgreSQL is already installed, because the driver is statically linked into the libaprutil1 shared object. libaprutil1-dbd-pgsql is a virtual package which is just a pointer to the libaprutil1 package.

Running the following snippet will create a configuration for mod_dbd:

sudo sh -c "cat > /etc/apache2/mods-available/dbd.conf << EOF
 <IfModule mod_dbd.c>
    DBDriver pgsql
    DBDParams 'host=localhost user=mirrorbrain password=12345 dbname=mirrorbrain connect_timeout=15'
 </IfModule>
EOF
"

Note

Edit the password in the template here – take note of it, you’ll need it below, when you create a database user account.

Note

Important: DBDParams strings must be unique; you cannot use the same string in another vhost. A possible workaround is to use differing connect_timeout values.

Install PostgreSQL

Install the PostgreSQL server (here, version 8.4 is the current version):

sudo apt-get install postgresql-8.4

Create the postgresql user account and database

Switch to user postgres:

sudo su - postgres

Create user:

createuser -P mirrorbrain
Enter password for new role:
Enter it again:
Shall the new role be a superuser? (y/n) n
Shall the new role be allowed to create databases? (y/n) n
Shall the new role be allowed to create more new roles? (y/n) n

Create database:

createdb -O mirrorbrain mirrorbrain
createlang plpgsql mirrorbrain

Exit user postgres:

exit

Edit host-based authentication

Add line host mirrorbrain mirrorbrain 127.0.0.1/32 md5 to the end of pg_hba.conf, which is to be found here:

sudo vim /etc/postgresql/8.4/main/pg_hba.conf

Start the PostgreSQL server:

sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.4 restart

Import initial mirrorbrain data

Import structure and data, running the commands as user mirrorbrain:

sudo su - mirrorbrain
gunzip -c /usr/share/doc/mirrorbrain/sql/schema-postgresql.sql.gz | psql -U mirrorbrain mirrorbrain
gunzip -c /usr/share/doc/mirrorbrain/sql/initialdata-postgresql.sql.gz | psql -U mirrorbrain mirrorbrain
exit

Next steps

From here, follow on with Initial configuration steps on all platforms.